Our legal adoption of Ginger and Maggie was 6/24/09, so we're right on one month together. Overall, I would say that God has done "exceeding abundantly over what we could have asked or imagined." The girls have bonded to our family and we have bonded to them. While we were in Guangzhou, we got our family picture taken and we ordered a charcoal drawing of us. It just arrived today, and I think it's beautiful - as I look at it, they just look like they have belonged with us always. They have laughed hard, played hard, and thrown themselves wholeheartedly into our family a hundred different ways and made us laugh that many times as well. I came home today and Ryan was lying on the floor letting them put his hair into TWENTY tiny ponytails all over his head. It almost looked like we had a big black baby in the family except that the hair was RED! :o) Never a dull moment. Last night I had to get up and remind Tony as he was stirring them up at bed time and Maggie's volume got louder and louder that we have to LIVE with her habits for a long time and to cool it! That girl has a set of opera lungs on her. Women in my family are loud, but she is the LOUDEST - I would place a large bet on it! We just had dinner; food is going much better, and I just came home from our Asian supermarket with a HUGE 25 pound bag of white rice because I am tired of buying little 5 pound bags that are gone in 4 days! People ask how we communicate all the time, and I would say that it "just happens"! Sometimes with gestures, sometimes showing them with our actions accompanying our words, sometimes with a Chinese-English dictionary, sometimes with actual real learned English words (and a few Chinese words) being exchanged back and forth! You can always tell when real communication has been accomplished by their bright eyes, their smiles and their cooperation, OR their confused, blank expressions that tell you that you need to try again!
We have had some up close encounters with the "darker sides" of their temperaments; lest those of you in the process of adopting think that everything's beautiful all the time! I've already written about Maggie's (and my) mini-meltdown the first week. The second week, I would summarize as a mini-showdown with Ginger. I have definitely encountered her strong will that Michael told us about. She has tried twice now to give me the silent treatment - it started when I was home schooling her and she wouldn't answer me. She is normally a bright, attentive, helpful student, "firing on all pistons", so this was a huge contrast. No amount of talking would bring her out of it, and she was willing to suffer hunger rather than answer me with a "yes please" when I asked her if she wanted lunch, as well as isolation in her room. We talked through it the next day (I was quite impressed with myself as a teacher and I know they got it because of their reactions). I thought we could scratch that lesson as complete, but today, 5 days later,I encountered the same thing. After speaking quite clearly to her that rudeness will get her nowhere in this family except lost privileges (which again, she was willing to sacrifice for whatever her "cause" was), I decided to try another method with her; the idea of which came from a book I recommend highly for adoptive families called "The Connected Child". I decided that if she was going to not speak to me, that she was going to have to do it while in my "kind but firm" presence, working by my side with extra chores. She helped with laundry, bringing in groceries, putting them away, peeling potatoes, taking out trash. I actually caught her smiling at one point, showing her icey heart had cracked once again. She's back! And she's great help, by the way! And I'm only half-exhausted from her, and half-exhausted from my miserable cold!
We also have experienced an encounter with what I believe was a fear and anger-induced reaction from Maggie. She has been doing fine with riding in the car, as long as the window was down and she was in the front seat. Tony, Jenna and the girls went out for dinner last night, and Jenna decided she was going to pull out her "I'm the big sister" card and get her front seat status back as they went from Zaxby's to Chick-Fil-A for ice cream and to see Joel there at work. As soon as they stopped, Maggie jumped out of the car and went running away as fast as she could, right along 141 which is a very busy road. Several yells and a minor car chase later, she was back under control and in safety. Wow! What was that? As I thought about it, I believe she truly is afraid of being sick and was angry that we were subjecting her to it. I think we need to do a better job of communicating our idea that she can actually learn to sit by the window in the 2nd seat and not have any trouble like that again.
I will close my novella with a request that you keep us in your prayers, and not just to cover any future escapades like I have told above. We will be working on our final education decision for them next week, as well as their first American pediatrician appointment. We truly believe they are older than their records indicate, and want to see how they graph out on the Asian growth chart as "just turned" 10 year olds! I am placing my bet right now that they'll be completely off the chart huge for that! We do have the option of changing their birth year as we readopt them in the U.S., so pray for wisdom in both of these "gray" areas.
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